Tuesday 8 May 2007

Tchaikovsky's house, Klin

This is where Tchaikovsky spent the last decade of his life. His piano is in the main upstairs room. He liked the house because of its rural setting, and the fact that it was on the main railway-line from Moscow to St Petersburg, so he could reach either city easily for concerts. It is no longer quiet, lying less than a hundred yards from the Leningrad to Moscow highway, on the edges of a much-expanded town, about 100 kms from Moscow. It was occupied for about three weeks in November and early December 1941 by the German Army, which used the building as a motorcycle repair shed.